Socialism

Socialism has been the most tried, and most failed government system, next to it's older brother (Tyranny). There have been many, many communes (cults, utopias). Some were small (like Zoar, Ohio), others were large (USSR, China, Nazi Germany, etc). Virtually all of them ended poorly.

Nordic countries aren't socialist, they are having major problems, and if you look at all the Socialist countries around the globe (North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba), and throughout history (Cambodia, Vietnam, China, USSR, etc), there are those that sucked, and those that are going to suck. Cherry picking is great for pies, but lousy for learning from life.

Three most common quotes by Socialists

❝ That's not REAL Socialism! ❞

Every SocialistAfter mentioning any example of Socialism

❝ REAL Socialism has never been tried! ❞

Every Socialist After mentioning any example of Socialism

❝ This time it will be different! ❞

Every Socialist After mentioning any example of Socialism

History

Socialism was founded and is rooted deep in envy, hate and control -- all primal emotions, which is why it is hard to combat with reason, facts or evidence.

While Socialism has always been around, it's current resurgence started in the 1800's while industrialization was starting in Europe. Workers had a choice: (a) live in rural farms, scraping by as indentured servants to the land-owners (b) move to the cities and do factory work and have higher incomes, live in slightly less squalor and have slightly better conditions. Many were choosing (b).

Socialists knew that while these people's conditions were better than the alternative, that many weren't getting ahead as fast as they would have liked, and there was abuse. So they preyed upon that frustration, greed, and envy at those more successful they are. And Marx and Engles came along and codified these old ideas into a collection of fables called the Communist Manifesto. And they invented bullshit anti-economics, that have all been disproven, like their ideas that economics is a fixed pie, thus the owner and worker are always at odds over "surplus value". The opposite is actually true: a thriving company is creating new value and sharing it with their employees -- and without the employer the people aren't better off, they're unemployed. But alas, if Socialists could learn, they would have gone extinct long ago.

In the end, Socialism can only work for short periods of time, and if you have nothing to compare it to. It is basically the idea that you should punish those who work the hardest and succeed the most, and reward the most, those that do the opposite (and live off everyone else). When you first eat the rich, and redistribute what is theirs, it is tasty, and the lower people are better off. Then over time, innovation slows, bureaucracy takes over, performance declines as the disincentives take root. Then your culture learns the futility of effort, the rewards in cheating the system, resentment at the system and others for their miserable existence, and you get a malaise. Atlas shrugs. The hard working leave, or go where they will be rewarded: criminal enterprise or party politics. Both are parasites on innovation and growth, and the economy may perform in spite of it, but it performs less than the alternative. This is why every socialist system collapses, the only question is how slow will that society mature and grow past it?

There are three forms of Socialism: Democratic Socialism, Revolutionary Socialism (Marxism/Communism), and Corporate Socialism (Fascism or Capitalistic Socialism).

Examples

Here's just a few examples of when Socialism was tired, and it ended poorly: 12 items

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - The progressive left has fostered disinformation and sensationalized problems with evil freedom/capitalism for so long, and regurgitated it through the media/educational institutions, so much, that their kids are buying the bullshit. Thus, they keep moving further and further into loonie left land. And none exemplify that better than Alaxandria Ocasio-Cortez, a limousine socialist that won the NY Primary against Joseph Crowley: a 10 term establishment guy. While Crowley was far left Representative, he wasn't far left enough for the DNC's new generation, and so Cortez beat him out promising recess will be longer and all the toys and candy will be free. The media played her as a founding a grass roots movements, but it's astroturf (Fake Grassroots), she was bought and paid for by Justice Democrats and they interviewed her as their Manchurian candidate. Much of the media and mainstream left defend her many absurd and anti-American statements, so she is a significant voice in the party. Plus, based on her years of expertise as a bartenders, she's one of their most educated advocates for Watermelon environmentalism: the ripe red fruit of socialism wrapped in a Green/Environmental rind.

There's a fiction that "Real Socialism" hasn't been tried. And when that's disproven by history, the American Socialists often fall back to, "well it hasn't been tried here", which shows even more ignorance. Here's a few examples of American Socialist Communes that were tried and failed:

1817 - I toured Zoar, Ohio, which is part of what got me more interested in researching this topic (and vice versa).

1841 - Brook Farm, Mass (Ripley's Follow Me or Not)

1842 - Fruitlands Commune

1856 - Octagon City, the Vegetarian Utopia

1930's - Fordlandia: Henry Ford tried to bring a slice of America to the Brazilian jungle

1967- Kaliflower Commune

1972 - 12 Tribes

Bernie Sanders - I constantly read fawning articles and blogs about Sanders. I really don’t care who you want to vote for, I just care that people are voting from a position of knowledge and are not lying to others (or themselves) about who/what he is. This reminds people of all the info they didn't get from the media.

Communism - Communism is just Revolutionary or Radical Socialism. Fascism is just Socialism with indirect control over the means of production. (E.g. businesses are proxies for the party, as long as they remain compliant). There's a bunch of debate about irrelevant nuances between Communism versus Socialism -- but the major ideas, and outcome is the same. (By using businesses as proxy for the state, there's a little bit more variances in fascism). Communism and Fascism seem more likely to coalesce around a single central authority figure (Leader) to enforce equality and Socialistic policies.

Democratic National Socialism - Babylon Bee hits the satire out of the park by claiming the Nazi's want to be called the Democratic Nazi's now, as if the word democratic makes it all better. Democratic Racism, Democratic Censorship, Democratic Genocide, Democratic Rape, which of those things is made better by putting Democratic in front of it? And the same goes for Democratic Socialism, whether it is Democratic National Socialism, or Democratic Globalist Socialism makes little difference to the people being oppressed.

Democratic Socialism - The Democratic Socialists had their convention, and it was a point of personal privilege outrage party. People were getting triggered by the use of gendered pronouns, the amount of background chatter and they objected to the "tactical" use of the term "democratic" in "democratic socialists," as a way to market the socialist ideology to Americans. Yet no one objected to use of the term comrade, despite those most associated with the term killing many millions of people last century.

(a) Denmark is ranked one of the free'est market economies in the world with less taxes/regulations on business than the U.S.

(b) they have strongest protections of individual property rights in the world (the opposite of Socialism)

(c) no minimum wage laws

(d) They aren't wealthy because they're Socialist (or have wealth redistribution): they became wealthy, then became a welfare state (not the other way around),

(e) then their rate of growth flattened because of the burdens of the welfare state: their policies slowed the rise in wealth of their people. Without it, they'd likely be doing better.

(f) and there was backlash from the debt and inefficient government spending, and they started privatizing things like their Social Security, Healthcare, and even education.

So while Denmark does have absurdly high burdens (taxes), and they blow it on social spending, they don't control the means of production, or they would have collapsed long ago. Because of those policies, they live much smaller, and have much weaker purchasing power than the average American. And even those systems they did socialize a bit, are only succeeding, because there's private variants that are better, to offload the failing public variants. Otherwise, they'd be the Venezuela of Europe.

The rise of the progressive left socialists under Obama is called "the Great Awokening", the sheeple horde. It's when Obama shed his facade of being a moderate and both fueled and followed the left's Occupy, BLM, antifa, intersectional Marxists and Democratic Socialists, after decades of miseducation in indoctrination camps known as Schools and Universities. They loosely aligned to fight over being the biggest victims and the most Woke: to lead by following, and following by decrying tyranny while demanding more of it to fix the injustices of the past. Journalism became clickbait parody of social media (and vise versa). The consequences purged the moderates (and moderation) from the DNC and resulted in Democrat losses of over 1,000 seats in state legislatures, governor’s mansions, and Congress... and what is left is nothing but tired old Socialists and new fanatics. Whether you believe Obama was the cause, or their feckless Follower-In-Chief, the Awokening happened, and we're not sure if we can wait for them to mature, or they've reached critical mass to bring down the empire. But Dunning-Kruger has a party, and many new candidates vying to be top dog in balcony speeches begging to invade Poland, and demanding the extermination of the greedy conservatives, religious and Trump supporters... for their own good, of course.

How to prove Socialist don't believe in Socialism - I have this discussion fairly often: there's something like a teachers strike, and my response is the tax system should be voluntary and allow the taxpayers to direct their money (in whole or in part) where they want. So the voters direct how much of their money goes to the general fund, education (the school budget) and so on. The same with roads, military, foreign aid and many other things should be based on taxpayer-directed funds. The school/districts job is only how to budget (direct) the money they get wisely -- and let the statistical averages decide the macro budget. (And agencies don't get to borrow, only spend what's directed to them)....

John Oliver is Jon Stewards perpetually outraged successor, but it feels like he's Jon's British Socialist cousin -- which isn't a big stretch as sympathy for statism seems to run deep in that family. It's their schtick: look at everything in the world as if you're channelling Mao or Michael Moore, if either had an occasionally amusing sense of humor. They're funny, if you don't think too deeply of their policies and consequences. But if you do, they're just Patch Adams telling crippled jokes to amputees at Walter Reed hospital.

Micheal Moore, the idiot savant without any latent talent. He's like Joseph Goebbels without the success, charm or professional integrity. Climate Radicalism is among the things he loves, but he doesn't live by the rules he wants others to. And Climate is really just an means to Elitism/Socialism/Statism as the ends.

Venezuela (Hugo Chavez) was everything that Hollywood, Michael Moore, Sean Penn and other limousine Socialists wanted: they came in, nationalized the oil, redistributed the wealth (created education and lots of programs)... and eventually the wealth ran out. And Venezuela went from being one of the economic capitals of growth and industry in South America, to a collapsed country with rampant poverty that produces little but crime and refugees.

So what did we learn? That's a joke, if Socialists could learn, they would have gone extinct thousands of years ago. What some of us learned is that Socialism can work for a short while, but central planning always underperforms a free market. They may collapse in 5 years, or may struggle for 50, but the idea that the central planners know more than everyone else, is flawed at it's nature. What happens is that they focus on the best producing industries, and run them more efficient by eliminating competition. But while that leanness looks good in the short term, it suffocates innovation, and it destroyed diversity of their economy (everything becomes about the few things the planners are focused on, and everything else starves out). Then when enough innovation happens in their key industry (and the didn't keep up), or a disruptive technology comes along, they all suffocate and have nothing else to fall back on. And the real illiterates will claim, "Real Socialism has never been tried", and invent a reason for why another failure doesn't count.

Communism is just Revolutionary or Radical Socialism. Fascism is just Socialism with indirect control over the means of production. (E.g. businesses are proxies for the party, as long as they remain compliant). There's a bunch of debate about irrelevant nuances between Communism versus Socialism -- but the major ideas, and outcome is the same. (By using businesses as proxy for the state, there's a little bit more variances in fascism). Communism and Fascism seem more likely to coalesce around a single central authority figure (Leader) to enforce equality and Socialistic policies.
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